It's hard to know where to start after watching Elizabeth Warren's town hall earlier this week in Jackson, Miss. Is there a spending package that she doesn't favor? Somebody said this dog's breakfast of spending proposals that she seems so fond of--from slavery reparations to the Green New Deal--might cost $100 trillion. A hundred trillion dollars. Now them's some government spending!
The commentariat will have to break down all these bad ideas one at a time. And Elizabeth Warren is a font of bad ideas. Even a fountain. Call her old faithful. She never disappoints to support another way to bankrupt the country.
But at least one of her bad ideas won't cost any money. She wants to get rid of the Electoral College.
By now, it's an old standby. At least it has been for Democrats since George W. Bush won the Electoral College and the presidency in 2000. Strange, but we don't remember complaints from the left when Bill Clinton won in 1992 and again in 1996 without once getting a majority of the popular vote. Both times, he won the Electoral College in a three-man race, but only managed to gather 43 percent, then 49.2 percent of the vote.
But the Electoral College can't be defended when a Republican wins by the rules of the race:
"Every vote matters," Elizabeth Warren told the crowd, "and the way we can make that happen is that we can have national voting, and that means get rid of the Electoral College." The audience at her town hall gave her a standing ovation. Even though a state like Mississippi is exactly why the nation has an Electoral College.
For as long as some of us old-timers can remember, the Electoral College has been debated and re-debated. Yet, Americans have never felt the need to drop the system adopted when our Constitution was.
Sure, the system has been modified over the years, almost from the first. The Founders hadn't anticipated the two-party system, and the candidate who came in second in the voting was supposed to be the vice president. Can you imagine President Donald Trump and Vice President Hillary Clinton? Talk about gridlock.
So the mechanism had to be changed after the 1800 election. Thanks to Alexander Hamilton, the unintended mess of 1800 was handled with aplomb, even if Aaron Burr tried to hijack things. The 12th Amendment keeps us from repeating that year.
What would be the alternatives to our current system? Elizabeth Warren and her kind don't say. Details don't get standing ovations.
We suppose the country could go to a straight popular vote, winner take all, no matter how slim the victory. But would that encourage a field so crowded that 20 percent of the vote would elect a president of We the People? We remember a governor named Buddy Roemer being elected governor of Louisiana in such a system. A weaker governor, with less influence in his first few years, you'd be hard pressed to find.
How about a runoff system? If the leading candidate doesn't get, say, 40 percent of the vote, then have another election? The French have such a system. And risk having their presidential runoffs featuring the two most extreme candidates.
The Electoral College does seem to get the most blame when a state can't seem to count its votes. See Florida in the year 2000. But at least the current system limits the recount to one or two states. Can you imagine the confusion that was Florida in 2000 turning to disaster as all 50 states went through a recount? Spare us. And the country.
But maybe the best reason to keep the Electoral College, at least from the point of view of a small state like Arkansas (or Mississippi), is that the Founders found a way to make states mean something. The candidates have to campaign here. Without an Electoral College, a handful of big states could pass the presidency and vice presidency around between themselves. Candidates wouldn't have to think of campaigning outside major population centers. And in close elections, the Corrupt Bargain might look downright fair in comparison.
For two centuries, the Electoral College has done its job. A straight popular vote might seem good in the abstract, or to Elizabeth Warren, but it's never been tested.
We prefer our candidates for president come to flyover country once in a while, to hear our voices, too. The coasts are nice, and that's where the people be, but the interior of this vast continental country has its own problems. And advantages. We are part of We the People, too. We'd like a say in who can be president of these United States.
There will always be those who fight the Electoral College. How do we know? Because there always has been. But a bumblebee shouldn't be able to fly. And the system the founders set up shouldn't be able to work. They both do.
Ditching the Electoral College might not be Elizabeth Warren's most expensive plan. But it might be a plan that most changes the United States of America. And not in a good way.
Let's not. We trust the ideas of the Madisons and Hamiltons and Jeffersons so much more than the current pols getting media play today. We'll bet we're not alone.
Editorial on 03/21/2019